ONLY 103 at our micro-weather station in Boonville Friday afternoon. Official reports had Ukiah getting up to 102. 90-degree highs are expected for the weekend and into next week with light winds and cooler more sleepable overnight temps.

PETER FONDA, THE ‘EASY RIDER’ STAR AND COUNTERCULTURE ICON, HAS DIED AT 79

by Mark Olsen

Peter Fonda, son of one of the great stars of the classic Hollywood era and a key player in the cinematic revolution that was “Easy Rider,” died Friday at his home in Los Angeles at age 79. The cause of death was given as respiratory failure due to lung cancer.

Son of Henry Fonda, brother to Jane Fonda and father of Bridget Fonda, Peter Fonda truly made a name for himself with “Easy Rider,” the 1969 countercultural road trip saga, which he starred in, co-wrote and produced. The film, directed by Dennis Hopper, captured the uneasy moment of late ’60s America and is widely seen to have helped usher in a new era for Hollywood.

“Easy Rider” became the fourth highest-grossing movie of 1969 at the U.S. box office and was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1998.

It also earned Fonda his first of two Academy Award nominations, for the film’s original screenplay co-written with Hopper and Terry Southern. His second came in the lead actor category for the 1997 independent film “Ulee’s Gold.”

Although, unlike his father and sister, Fonda never took home an Oscar, he did win two Golden Globes — for his supporting performance opposite Helen Mirren in the 1999 television film “The Passion of Ayn Rand” and for “Ulee’s Gold.” He received three additional nominations over the years.

In a statement on Friday, Jane Fonda said, “I am very sad. He was my sweet-hearted baby brother. The talker of the family. I have had beautiful alone time with him these last days. He went out laughing.”

A separate statement from his family read, “In one of the saddest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts. … And, while we mourn the loss of this sweet and gracious man, we also wish for all to celebrate his indomitable spirit and love of life. In honor of Peter, please raise a glass to freedom.”

Fonda was married three times, first to Susan Brewer, the second to Rebecca Crockett and the third to Margaret DeVogelaere. He had two children, Bridget and Justin, with Brewer.

Born in New York City on Feb. 23, 1940, Fonda made his film debut in 1963’s “Tammy and the Doctor.” He would later star in Roger Corman’s 1966 biker movie “The Wild Angels” before also appearing in Corman’s drug-themed 1967 movie “The Trip.”

The success of “Easy Rider” was cataclysmic, both at the box office and as a cultural force. As Charles Champlin wrote in The Times in December 1969, “It is the mark of an extraordinary movie that discussion about it will not die. ‘Easy Rider,’ more than any other movie this year, is one which people can’t let alone, whether they like it or (even more) whether they don’t.”

Fonda would go on to direct a few films himself, beginning with the 1971 western “The Hired Hand.” His acting roles in the 1970s included films such as 1974’s “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry,” 1975’s “Race With the Devil” and 1977’s “Outlaw Blues.”

While Fonda was a steady presence onscreen, few of his films broke through with critics or audiences. But he experienced a notable career resurgence with “Ulee’s Gold,” directed by Victor Nuñez.

Playing a Vietnam-veteran-turned-beekeeper, Fonda delivered a performance of quiet power. As Times critic Kenneth Turan wrote in June 1997, “‘Ulee’s’ is built around a compelling performance by Peter Fonda that unmistakably echoes the work of his father, Henry, while serving as the capstone of the son’s long career as well.”

Acknowledging the large shadow his father had over his life, Fonda published an autobiography in 1998, titled, “Don’t Tell Dad: A Memoir.” He continued to act right until the end of his life, appearing in such films as 1999’s “The Limey,” 2007’s “3:10 to Yuma,” 2018’s “Boundaries” and many more.

Yet there was one film that largely continued to shape his career and public persona. In a 2018 interview with The Times, Fonda reflected on the legacy of “Easy Rider.”

“That audience was not something that the establishment knew anything about or how to reach,” he said. “They thought it was a small little market. But it was a market that had never been played to. Nobody had sung their song to them. They had their poetry. They had their artwork. They had their music. They had their dress. They didn’t have their movie.”

(LA Times)

GREAT DAY IN ELK

Saturday, August 24, Great Day In Elk

Parade At Noon, Followed by Afternoon Carnival, Food, Activities And Live Entertainment. Barbecued Jamaican Jerk Pork Or Veggie Option 3:00 To 7:00 P.M. Benefit For The Greenwood Community Center In Elk. For More Information Go To www.Elkweb.Org Or Email Meabloyd@Gmail.Com. No Dogs Please.

VELMA'S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM

11750 Anderson Valley Way in Boonville, California

Open Friday Noon-6:00, Saturday 10am-4pm, Sunday 10am-2pm

Peaches - Rising Star

Blueberries - South Moon and Chandler

Plums - Italian prune

Apples-Maiden's Blush and Red Gravenstein

Cucumber - Lemon and Armenian

Tomatoes - Early Girl, Blush, Sungold, and others

Olive oil - Arbequina/Arbesana blend

Kohlrabi

Asian pears - Hosui

Pluots - Flavour Supreme

MENDO TO PG&E: REVISE POISON POLICY & PAY US FOR YOUR COST IMPACT

Board Of Supervisors Agenda

For August 20, 2019

Item: 4d) Approval of Transmission of Letter to PG&E Regarding Requests Related to Vegetation Management and Public Safety Power Shut Off

(Sponsors: Supervisors Haschak and Williams)

August 20, 2019

TO: Alison Talbott

Pacific Gas and Electric Company

2555 Myrtle Avenue

Eureka, CA 95501

RE: Request Regarding Vegetation Management and Public Safety Power Shut Off

Dear Ms. Talbott:

On behalf of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, we ask that PG&E consider the following requests regarding vegetation management activities and local assistance in Public Safety Power Shut Off (PSPS) preparedness.

The County received numerous complaints from residents regarding the spraying of herbicides as part of PG&E’s vegetation management and tree trimming projects. While the County appreciates the efforts of PG&E to reduce the potential wildfire risk with additional vegetation management, we respectfully ask that PG&E stop any use of synthetic herbicides on roadsides within Mendocino County. This request is in alignment with the agreement Mendocino County has with CalTrans to not use herbicides for vegetation management. In addition, we ask that herbicides only be used on public or private property when there is permission given by the landowner. The current opt-out system in place by PG&E to use the designated 1-800 number is flawed and residents are unable to reach the right personnel to opt-out. The County requests PG&E transition to an opt-in system to gain permission by landowners prior to spraying herbicides. The County would also like confirmation from PG&E that brush and tree limbs from the vegetation management projects will be removed.

Additionally, the County is preparing for continuity of operations during a PG&E PSPS event and must rent/purchase generators and have electrical work completed to use the generators in order to maintain basic core County functions at the main Administration Center. Mendocino County estimates that it will cost $50,000 for capital improvement projects for the installation of electrical intersects at the Administration Center, longer term planning efforts to provide additional backup power will cost $26,000 and rental of 5 standby generators for 3 months will cost an estimated $46,000. Mendocino County requests reimbursement from PG&E for the generators and electrical work or a temporary loan of generators from PG&E to the County to offset some of the PSPS costs.

The County of Mendocino respectfully asks PG&E to consider our request regarding vegetation management and reimbursement of costs associated with generator power needed for a PSPS event. Please contact Nash Gonzales at gonzalezn@mendocinocounty.org or (707) 463-4441 with your response.

Existing law requires each electrical corporation to annually prepare a wildfire mitigation plan and to submit its plan to the commission for review and approval, as specified. Existing law requires each local publicly owned electric utility and electrical cooperative, before January 1, 2020, and annually thereafter, to prepare a wildfire mitigation plan and to verify that the wildfire mitigation plan complies with all applicable rules, regulations, and standards, as appropriate. Existing law requires that the wildfire mitigation plans include, among other things, appropriate and feasible procedures for notifying a customer who may be impacted by the deenergizing of electrical lines and requires that the procedures consider the need to notify, as a priority, critical first responders, health care facilities, and operators of telecommunications infrastructure.

This bill would require that the procedures for notifying a customer who may be impacted by the deenergizing of electrical lines by a local publicly owned electric utility, an electrical cooperative, or an electrical corporation direct notification to all public safety offices, critical first responders, health care facilities, and operators of telecommunications infrastructure with premises within the footprint of potential deenergization for a given event. The bill would require each electrical corporation to also include protocols for the deenergization of the electrical corporation’s transmission infrastructure in the wildfire mitigation plan, for instances when the deenergization may impact customers who, and entities that, are dependent upon the infrastructure. The bill would require a mobile telephony services provider to undertake specified steps in preparation for receiving notifications regarding the deenergization of electrical lines. The bill would require a mobile telephony services provider, upon receipt of a notification regarding the deenergization of electrical lines, to provide event-oriented information, including information relative to affected areas and communications capabilities during the projected outage, necessary for appropriate stakeholders for the affected area to effectively achieve their organizational missions.

Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime.

Because certain provisions of this bill would be a part of the act and because a violation of an order or decision of the commission implementing the bill’s requirements would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program by creating a new crime.

Paragraph (7) “The Wildfire mitigation plan shall include… Appropriate and feasible procedures for notifying a customer who may be impacted by the deenergizing of electrical lines. The procedures shall direct notification to all public safety offices, critical first responders, health care facilities, and operators of telecommunications infrastructure with premises within the footprint of potential deenergization for a given event.

Which would be better than the current minimal robo-calls that PG&E was planning to do. But this is just a proposed bill and the language has no effective date. It would be nice if PG&E would see the shortcomings in their notification process and simply volunteer to do the reasonable things called for in McGuire’s bill.

BUT we’re not holding our breath.

(Mark Scaramella)

READER JOANIE STEVENS pointed out yesterday that we missed a line in the Grand Jury report which exempted the Board of Supervisors from answering the GJ’s complaint that the CEO report “does not include substantive department updates, e.g. new jail addition, Sheriff overtime, BOS directive status, departmental statistics and major road project status.”

For reasons not clear to us, the Grand Jury specifically excluded their reporting comment in the portion of their report indicating which items the Board should address in their response. The Supervisors were “required to respond to these findings and recommendations: Board of Supervisors (F1-F3,F5-F9 and R1,R2,R4-6,R8-R12).” I.e., Finding F4 and Recommendations R3 and R7 were not required to be addressed.

CEO Angelo had previously responded to Finding 4 by saying: “Disagree. The CEO Report does include substantive department updates. The CEO report is released on a monthly basis and includes updates from various departments, including the Cultural Services Agency, Animal Shelter, Human Resources, Health and Human Services Agency and others on an as needed basis. Reports include information on facility projects, the budget, cannabis, important community meetings, Measure B, roads, upcoming meetings, and vacant Board and Commission seats. Additionally, the CEO report is only one means of communicating information to the Board and general public. The Board Agenda contains standing items from departments such as Transportation and Planning and Building Services that include monthly reports on department activities. Certain county offices operating under elected department heads will also periodically report on activities directly to the Board or in coordination with the CEO. Board agendas also include updates and/or action items on substantive issues such as the new jail addition, mental health or homelessness. The Board agendas also include a standing item titled Supervisors’ Reports Regarding Board Special Assignments, Standing and Ad Hoc Committee Meetings, and Other Items of General Interest. Finally, reports and updates on substantive issues are included in the annual Budget Hearings and in quarterly budget reports to the Board of Supervisors.”

IN OTHER WORDS the CEO’s response was non-responsive and pretends that what she’s been doing — issuing a collection of meaningless press releases with occasional, random out-of-context statistics (without history or trend info) amounts to “substantive department updates.”

And the Grand Jury’s Recommendation R7 said, “Improve the CEO Report to include information on current major projects, tracking, expenditures and strategic goals.”

To this the CEO replied: “This recommendation has been implemented. The CEO Report includes substantive information. Please refer to the CEO’s response to Finding 4.”

AS IF the Grand Jury is a bunch of idiots. The recommendation has NOT been implemented. The CEO’s report does not contain “information on current major projects, tracking, expenditures and strategic goals” and the CEO’s response to Finding 4 does not even offer anything on those topics. Clearly Recommendation 7 has not been implemented at all. No “improvements” were offered, only business as usual.

THE SUPES, probably not realizing at the time that their tentative approval of the CEO’s response last month was woefully inadequate, now are stuck with these technicalities which give the CEO just enough wiggle room to again avoid monthly departmental reporting which the Grand Jury was clearly calling for.

JUST BECAUSE the Grand Jury didn’t “require” a response from the Board on the reporting items, doesn’t mean that they can’t respond anyway to those two significant items which the Grand Jury oddly failed to itemize for the Supervisors.

SO THERE’S STILL a slight chance that somebody on the Board will bring up the reporting item on Tuesday when they discuss their response to the Grand Jury since this would be a good opportunity to get at least a start on monthly reporting.

BUT we’re not holding our breath.

(Mark Scaramella)

ED NOTES

ARTHUR FOLZ has been named Athletic Director at Anderson Valley High School, replacing Robert Pinoli who has retired. Folz is also a teacher at the school.

SPEAKING of schools, the mystery remains: What do all those little kids carry in their backpacks? From the look of some of them, straining under their loads, the look like they're carrying bricks.

THE LATEST in epistolary irritations? "Warmly yours" or simply "warmly," and always from a stranger. Message sign-offs are technically valedictions to close off salutations. I prefer my old friend Vern Piver's simple, "Later" or, more formally, anything ranging from "Sincerely" to "Thank you."

DANGEROUS LIES. As Trump careens around the White House ruminating about buying Greenland and calling thin people fatsos, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have described the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri as "murder," although Obama's Department of Justice and the State of Missouri found that the 18-year-old Brown died when he was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson when Brown attacked Wilson and tried to grab his gun. Trump's scattershot racial provocations have obviously created whole worlds of bad feeling, and now the opposition to him is selling straight-up race lies. No Democratic candidate for President has challenged Warren or Harris's assertion that Michael Brown was "murdered" — and where does that leave those of us who still have at least some residual regard for the truth?

THE CELEBRATIONS OF WOODSTOCK as a pivotal event carries me back through the thick mists of time to recall the basic social split between hippies and the more politically-oriented youth, of which I was one. Hippies thought the best strategy was to turn on, tune in, drop out, hence the Northcoast's back to the land movement. A minority of the young were for direct action against The Beast. The rightwing has faithfully mischaracterized the dissenters of that time as "60's radicals," but, as my friend Frank Bardacke has pointed out, and he was a ringleader, the ferment was reformist rather than revolutionary. Free speech? Civil rights? Resisting the War On Vietnam? The beginnings of the Women's Movement? Strictly reform, although at the time it was equated with Bolshevism and, truth to tell, there were lots of us all for bringing down the whole system. But we were a minority and very young, and we were certainly a minority when "the movement" jumped off which, as it's turned out, the only "movement" in history to move steadily backwards into the fetid embrace of the Democratic Party.

IF I'M OFF here I'm sure I'll hear about it, but I can trust AVA readers for a fair hearing, which is why I'm putting it to you: The other night I was in a discussion with two young women about the Epstein case. Just as I began to say, "Well, of course, the guy was a serial predator, but shouldn't a fourteen-year-old know enough by 14 not to be prey?" They both jumped my bones. "Better walk that one back right now, Mister. Are you crazy?" I blundered on. "Lots of people are prey all their lives, but these girls weren't orphans or fending for themselves on the streets of Calcutta…"

I WAS SOON beaten into silence. "Good lord," one began. "There are so many issues to address here I don’t know where to begin," one said as the other one muttered damnation. "You should get educated about this kind of predator and the gullibility of their victims. Read up on it. The Me Too movement has gone a little off the rails… but this kind of predatory world is so dark it’s hard to fathom. Here’s where you should go with this: Would you have thought your daughter was responsible at that age? Those girls were not raised in families that helped them or protected them. This is not a story that is black and white where those girls are concerned. Wake up! Blaming the victim is a very ignorant place to be. Trump is so good at that. Are you like that, too?"

GULP GOLLY. I don't think I have Trumpian tendencies, and all I said was that girls and boys both have… have… What's the Victorian term? "Agency." That's it. Agency. Even if they have only a loose grip on reality, and unless they're retarded they'd have to know that an invitation from a middle-aged man to give him a massage wasn't an invitation to a church picnic, especially if he offered them 500 bucks. My daughter at that age? She would have told me immediately and, well, nothing close ever came up. She knew what she was doing by the time she was six, and like most kids, even little kids, she knew what wasn't right.

CHECK THAT. One day, when she was about ten, my daughter had been down the street after school at her friend's house. This was Boonville, not Manhattan or even Albion. When she got home, I was reading the paper or otherwise distracted. She lingered nearby until it occurred to me that something was bothering her. Finally, she blurted, "Do you think Mr. Christian should be walking around naked when I'm visiting?" I probably yelled, disbelieving. "What did you say? Of course he shouldn't, and you're not going over there again, ever." Turned out the evil little perv was already under investigation for molesting his daughters. Deputy Squires told me later that the guy's kids and his wife were afraid to testify against him so the DA couldn't make a case. That was a time when lots of children were being raised in the context of "Do Your Own Thing," and lots of them suffered because they had no adults to turn to.

'THE MAYOR WILL LEE SHOW'

by Rex Gressett

"It was the Academy Awards without movies, it was the Emmys without music, it was the most fabulous City Council meeting EVER — with a big fat cake and plenty of coffee.

Fort Bragg Mayor Will Lee was the “Grand Presenter,” preeminent community booster, and star of the evening.

It was the first time the city got a look at what Will Lee was really capable of. Up to now, our semi-new Mayor has made it a point to defer respectfully to the former Mayor Lindy Peters, taking instruction from the master of self-promotion with respectful deference. They agree on everything so that makes it easier.

Monday night, Will Lee stepped out of the shadow of his mentor and demonstrated his own innovative creativity and a special talent for leadership through showmanship.

Everybody loved it.

Town Hall was packed to overflowing — even onto the sidewalk. All previous City Council meetings looked pale and pointless by comparison. We used to be surprised to get coffee. The cake was for retirements and dismally minimal.

Monday night there was CAKE. Looking back on all that policy and regulation going boringly nowhere, and absolutely zero glamour, one could not help but be forcefully impressed that this was certainly a departure from routine City Council meetings.

Certainly, it was Will Lee's finest moment so far.

Technically, it was the ONLY thing he has done in his tenure as mayor, but I ain't quibbling. It was very much worth the wait. I had three pieces of cake. It was a big night for a really talented entertainer and a guy that clearly knows how to throw a shindig. Will Lee: Supermayor!

It was surprisingly easy. Will Lee simply gave awards and plaques to everybody, Literally everybody — and they lined up in droves.

He gave plaques to tattoo artists and flooring store owners, he gave one to the barn across the street from where he works, and an artist girl he knows from the Tip Top bar. He gave them to everyone he could think of. It filled Town Hall and was a giant success.

It is a measure of the stubbornly enduring prestige and importance of the City Council in Fort Bragg that virtually everyone who was awarded a plaque came to get one. People were getting calls out of the blue right up to the big night.

There was a little applause fatigue and more than a little wonder at the magnitude of the event. But there was also an actual line of satisfied people filing out of the building with their shiny new plaques. Plaques — not the bullshit little certificates of lesser administrations.

Will Lee was visibly pleased with himself as the meeting emptied out after the great awards extravaganza and the Council got down to business in a comfortingly empty hall.

They went through a light agenda like lightening. The blue ribbon ad hoc committee that Councilwoman Tess Albin Smith has been orchestrating made a polished evaluation of the CVRA (California Voting Rights Act) situation and promised three public input meetings on our uncertain political future.

I thought that the committee members did a good job running down the facts of the matter. They laid it out in remedial black and white as if they were explaining it all to an uninformed third-grader and elaborated briefly on the inherent irrationality of a reform intended to increase minority political participation that in empirical fact makes minority participation more UNlikely.

They told us how bad it can be when you lose the right to hold an open election and how it would look if you did. They called that distinction, pros and cons. They promised three meetings for public input. Which is a sure sign that they are assembling ammunition to cram it down your throat.

Stay tuned, the City Council as we know it is doomed under the CVRA. You heard it here first.

They gave the green light to the removal of a traffic circle (more on that later). They gave Gabriel Maroney back his $1,000 for stopping the catastrophic destruction of the GP dry sheds. They rubber-stamped the next step in bringing 5G connectivity into our intimate midst and lamented, briefly, the city’s impotency to stop the saturation of the local population with microwaves. Bye-bye city bees. They tossed a few hundred thousand in grant gravy to the Development Director (normal and uncontested).

All in all, the meeting was exemplary in its civility and efficient in its process. They did a little tweaking of policy as if they were actually doing something vital and went home satisfied with themselves and confident that cakes and circuses covered their butts.

It was a real fine meeting.

NO LOGICAL ARGUMENT AGAINST…

To the Editor:

Some people think if they make false statements long enough and loud enough they become true. In a recent letter to the editor regarding the Harris Quarry asphalt plant application we heard all kinds of Horrors. Asphalt plants create explosive pressure and create fires with their exhaust, The supervisors are fast tracking the application, 50 trucks per hour are going to haul explosive asphalt, A school and church are right next door. A forest fire and earthquake are all but assured.

Let’s look at the facts. There is no pressure created in any part of the asphalt production process. In fact, if you have a natural gas, diesel or propane heater in your house then you are using the exact same burner and combustion process that the asphalt plant uses with the exact same odds of starting a forest fire.

The supervisors are fast tracking the permitting process. Really? I hardly think 15 years and millions of dollars spent on permitting is a fast tracked project. The original permit application was submitted in 2004. Keep the Code has tied this permit up in court since 2012 and after losing their court battle they appealed on economic grounds because they lost on environmental issues.

Do we need another asphalt plant? That’s like asking if we need another grocery store. We all know what happened in Willits when Ray’s Century Market closed. Willits had the highest priced groceries in Mendocino County right up until Grocery Outlet arrived. Competition is always good for the consumer.

If you were to believe that 50 trucks per hour will be hauling asphalt from the plant that would be 1,250 tons per hour. There is not an asphalt plant in existence that is capable of that kind of production. The plant in question will be producing around 300 tons per hour a mere 12 truck loads.

One of Keep The Code’s talking points that Ridgewood grade is the highest point on 101 between Mexico and Canada is actually one of the best qualities of this location for asphalt production. The School and Church located over a mile from the plant site is straight down hill from the plant the odds of any air born emissions which are very minuscule to begin with, or noise reaching them are very slim.

And here is the part that all true county environmentalists should love and embrace. All the loaded trucks leaving the plant are headed downhill and are empty when making the climb back to the plant, a huge fuel savings. The aggregates needed for production are on site eliminating the need to truck imported raw materials to the plant. The top of the mountain is the furthest from a watershed you can possibly get. These facts alone make this plant site a huge environmental win for Mendocino County.

I’m not really sure why Keep The Code is so opposed to the Ridgewood site because I have never really heard them make any kind of logical argument against it. I’m guessing it’s probably NIMBY-ism which is never a good reason to reject a sound environmental and economic plan.

David Lovell

Willits

WILLITS TO BECOME HOME TO WORLD’S LARGEST AQUAPONIC CANNABIS CULTIVATION PARK

Pathways to giving have many iterations, and Supervisor John Haschak found his own path to supporting what is most important to him – education. As a public school teacher, education has always been at the forefront of his mind, and when the Board of Supervisors voted in a salary increase Supervisor Haschak chose to work with The Community Foundation of Mendocino County to redirect his increase into a scholarship for students within his district – Willits, Laytonville, and Round Valley.

“Public service is a critical ingredient in healthy communities,” Haschak tells me. “I have taught in the Willits public schools for the past 29 years. Education is a vital key to creating better lives for people and communities.” Public service has been a large part of Haschak’s life. A graduate of Willits High School, Haschak received his BA in History and Political Science at UCLA, then his teaching credential from the UCLA Graduate School of Education. Following a few years serving in the Peace Corps, he then worked for Migrant Head Start before beginning his teaching career in the Willits public schools.

Haschak became a supervisor for the 3rd district in 2019. When the Supervisors voted a raise in 2018, Haschak reached out to the Community Foundation to bring his vision of a scholarship to fruition and the John Haschak Public Service Scholarship Fund was created.

This multi-year scholarship for Round Valley, Willits, and Laytonville high school seniors supports students who attend vocational school, community college, or four-year college or university with a priority to students who desire to pursue careers in public service. “Whether it be local government, education, first responders, or social work, I want to encourage and support young adults aspiring to these careers,” John tells me. His passion to service is palpable.

Following the announcement for the new scholarship, 30 exceptional students applied. Interviewing students for our scholarship programs is one of the most rewarding things we do. Coming face-to-face with students’ passions, and hearing in their own words how they want to shape their future provides a glimpse into the world that lies ahead. The students applying for The John Haschak Public Service Scholarship were no exception, and following some challenging decisions, three students were awarded these four-year scholarships. “We had the pleasure of granting three scholarships for $4,000 each to well deserving recipients,” Haschak announced. “Savanna Hofmaister of Willits High School, Mariah Cox of Laytonville High School, and Emily Escareno-Arteaga of Round Valley High School all plan on careers in public service.”

Indeed, Savanna Hofmaister is planning her path into UCLA to study languages with a desire to teach ESL abroad. While Mariah Cox is planning to enter the medical field as a physical therapist following her schooling at Northern Arizona University. Emily Escareno-Arteaga is committed to becoming a social worker after attending Humboldt State University.

I am passionate about every scholarship fund we steward, because I believe education is one of the most vital ingredients to creating a thriving community. However, one of the things that I particularly love about Haschak’s scholarship is its ability to support a student through all four years of their education. This commitment truly endorses a student’s passion, and allows him/her to feel secure in his/her academic career knowing his/her scholarship funds will carry through.

The Community Foundation began its rich history of stewarding donor funds into scholarship programs in 2000 with the creation of the Mendocino Agricultural Families’ Scholarship Fund designed to help the children of Mendocino County’s agriculturally-employed families. We have since added an additional 30 scholarship funds, and awarded over $3M in scholarships to Mendocino County students. Many donors find scholarship funds a touching way to remember a loved one, while others utilize this mechanism for making a positive impact in their community to honor a person or passion. It is our mission to work with donors to find the best path to give within their community in a meaningful way, and we are honored to work with donors such as Supervisor Haschak to enrich the community by supporting the next generation.

THE ANSWER IS NO

Response to injured wildlife question:

In response to the question recently posed asking if there is anyone to provide medical attention to wildlife injured by cars. The answer is NO. Injured adult mammal wildlife, i.e. anything old enough to be out walking around on its own, is very dangerous. The only option we have in this county is to call Fish & Wildlife and IF the animal is posing a hazard to the public, they will 'dispatch' (humanely kill it). However our wardens are often hours from such an accident.

Adult wildlife cannot be held in captivity in a veterinary office or rehabilitation situation as it is so frightened, terrified, that the stress level will often kill it or it will kill itself trying to escape.

Additionally there is no one in our county who is willing or able to provide medical help for an adult wild animal, and they are far too dangerous for a lay-person to catch and transport anywhere for help. I have seen unconscious animals come awake in the back seat of moving vehicles with disastrous consequences to the driver and passenger. Imagine a bobcat or deer crashing around in your car trying to escape.

There are occasional rescues that happen in other counties, and you might hear about them on TV or in the news. These are rare.

NOTES FROM THE NURSING HOME

Mr. AVA,

Sign Ralph Bostrom of North Brook Nursing for future written renderings of life in the Mendo. Best treatment I’ve read in a while.

A-listers, as mentioned, would be less reticent to enter your hallowed pages.

A dog named Bella, played by a real canine and not computer-generated, is the main character in the film “A Dog’s Way Home", which is now available on DVDs. The maker of this new 2019 film also made the popular, award-winning film “A Dog’s Purpose”. Both are exciting and informative family adventures, with rave reviews.

Bella--Spanish for “beautiful"--was raised by cats, whom she later helps feed and protect. They make a loving family, embodying playfulness as well as presence, restraint, and wisdom. Emotional scenes occur between Bella and her humans, cats, and other friends. The film reveals how dogs might think.

Bella is on a quest to “Go Home!,” she keeps reminding us as she goes on a 400-mile adventure into the wilderness. On her epic journey, Bella meets “Big Kitty,” whose mother was killed by a hunter. We later learn that “Big Kitty” is a cougar. Bella becomes her “Mother Cat” and adopts her.

The film has touching scenes of human-dog contact, including playing together and the messes that dogs can make. It evokes both laughter and sadness. Bella experiences both kind and unkind people, including dogcatchers. Her protection from a mean dogcatcher includes military veterans who work at a veteran’s hospital. They back down the dogcatcher who has been trying to capture and eliminate her. She is a vital “service dog” by nature, which helps people deal with Post-Traumatic Stress. “Bella helps me with the Post-Traumatic Stress that I suffer from,” explains one of her military allies.

An alive dog, a loving human, and nature are the stars of this film. Bella seems to be guided by a higher power, to which she can help us connect.

Was it dogs who trained humans to meet their needs, or humans who trained dogs to meet our needs? Dogs -- as well as cats, horses, and other animals -- can bring so much love into a family.

In my veterans group, we do not consider our issues to be “disorders,” which are hard to recover from. “Moral injury” is a better term to describe them, which indicates a problem that is not terminal. Healing is possible.

My dog Daisie is about the same size as Bella and helps me with Post-Traumatic Stress, even after these many decades. I took Daisie to the Santa Rosa Veteran’s Center to train her, as well as myself on how to care for her. Like Bella, she seems driven by love and loyalty. I am the “odd man out” in my family of origin; I find my deepest companionship with dogs, redwoods, oaks, berries, and other wild things on the Kokopelli Farm where I have lived for nearly 30 years.

Fortunately, according to the film, “Dogs have faith in us.” Lucky us!

(Dr. Shepherd Bliss {3sb@comcast.net is a retired college professor. He has mainly farmed for the last 30 years and has contributed to 24 books.)

JOHN SAKOWICZ WRITES: I'M WONDERING WHY it's been such a fight here in Mendocino County to even broach the subject of a public bank, never mind a cannabis-friendly county bank. It's good business. It makes sense. The time has come for cannabis banking. Even Forbes says it's a good idea.

Fall 2019 Community Workshops: Building an Economy for Our Common Good — Bringing the Map Alive with New Organizations and Campaigns

Join us in expanding our multi-year mapping project to identify and connect all of the organizations in Mendocino County that are building an Economy for Our Common Good. These enterprises challenge our dominant economic, political and social models by including environmental concerns, social justice and/or economic democracy in their underlying mission. We will also be creating public policies for the common good around housing, the environment, money, education, healthcare, etc.

This course takes off from your enthusiastic response to the April, 2019 launching of our map of the Economy for Our Common Good in Mendocino County at the Caspar Community Center. Together we will investigate and clarify the values, rationale and essential elements of Our Economy for the Common Good, while building new organizations and campaigns to support public policies for the common good like public banking and community land trusts. All of this work will guarantee a strong, vital, just and sustainable future in Northern California. Please help us in this important effort. To register for the workshops, call or write Jim at 964-1323 (rtp@mcn.org) or Carrie at 937-2554 (cdurkee@mcn.org).

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue was released on August 17, 1959—sixty years ago tomorrow. That was ten years after, and ten degrees cooler, than the little big band of Miles’ Birth of the Cool. With Kind of Blue the baby had grown up: sleeker, more earnest, now distrustful of irony, and also cagier, suspicious without wanting to show anything that might suggest defensiveness. Its icy hauteur sets the standard for art that draws you in by pretending it doesn’t need anyone or anything but itself.

Kind of Blue sold like cool-cakes. Its popularity has only increased over the years. Often said to be the best-selling jazz record in history, it had attained quadruple platinum status by 2008; by then, some four million copies have been sold in the US. At sixty it has topped five million.

The recording took place in 1959 on two days six weeks apart. First came the double three-hour sessions from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon and 7:00 to 10:00 in the evening on March 2, 1959 in the converted church on 30th Street in Manhattan that was the Columbia studio. Union rate was then pegged at $48.50 per session, and since there were two services Davis’ sidemen were entitled to double scale. Davis argued for a bonus of $100 for the first day’s work for his stalwarts, bassist Paul Chambers and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.

As Ashley Kahn notes in his excellent Kind of Blue: the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo, 2000), the initial producer of the session, Irving Townsend (his voice can be heard on the studio sequences included on the fiftieth anniversary re-issue of the album) wrote in an internal Columbia Records memo that Davis would “accept an advance of $10,000 with only a mild oath” after the success of Birth of the Cool and the subsequent Sketches of Spain. Miles had asked for $15,000. It’s hard to know how much Miles made off the record in total, but it’s a lot.

The newcomer drummer Jimmy Cobb and the pianists Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans had to make do with their union wages. For the April 22 afternoon session that concluded the recording, Davis’s sidemen got $64.67, since the proceedings went overtime by half-an-hour. Miles got double that. An invoice reprinted in Kahn’s book shows that union rules also dictated that Wynton Kelly got paid the same amount for the April 22 date even though he had only played on the first session back in March. By 1959 Kelly was the Davis group’s official pianist, and was surprised on hurrying to the studio by cab for the March date that Miles’ former piano player, Bill Evans, was already sitting at the Steinway. Kelly had been brought in for the only “real” blues number on the recording, “Freddie the Freeloader,” which was done in the first session. Kelly doubtless didn’t stick around for the evening, but cashed the checks for his non-work on the April date.

As his later television commercial appearances for mopeds and the like make clear, Davis was a canny money man and promoter of his own image, one he always sailed close to the cool winds of fashion and favor. Another Townsend memo from April of 1960 relates that “Miles Davis is primarily concerned with the amount of jazz now on jukeboxes in many areas of the country while he is not represented.” Columbia promptly turned out promotional 45s with a tune from Davis’ Porgy & Bess paired with one from Kind of Blue on the flip side. Many first heard this music in diners and bars over the jukebox.

The first pressing of Kind of Blue, released into sweltering August, numbered 50,000 with the titles of the B sides, “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches,” mistakenly switched, an error probably due to the fact that Townsend had handed the project off to Teo Macero, who was ultimately credited as producer.

The fiftieth anniversary year brought various commemorations. There was a Kind of Blue tour by the So What Band of Jimmy Cobb, the last surviving member of the sextet that met in the Columbia studio back in 1959. The decades roll past and Cobb is still going strong at ninety, marking the sixtieth anniversary by bringing out a new recording of his own today: This I Dig of You on the Smoke Sessions label.

Much is now made of the spontaneity of the recording, how all was done in the studio without rehearsal or reflection, how the tunes were new to all and that the entire effort is akin, as Bill Evans put it in his liner notes, to the “Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous, [and] must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water pan in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment.” But things were not as spur-of-the-moment as all that. “All Blues” had evolved over a six-month period prior to the recording session for Kind of Blue. Cobb has also divulged that the band had played “So What” on gigs before the recording session.

The studio chatter included on the Kind of Blue Legacy Edition is quite illuminating, though its purpose here seems intended mostly to conjure’ Miles presence by summoning his distinctive gravelly drawl. His voice had been wrecked when he shouted too soon after an operation on his vocal chords. These were further then rutted by all countless cigarettes. It was the voice later sold mopeds and managed second-rate dialogue on an episode of the television series, Miami Vice, among other Hollywood forays towards further fame and fortune.

The halting introductions, the searingly efficient swing, the brooding defiance of Kind of Blue, seem so poised that one hardly thinks it the product of real musicians. Its cool seems at times like the proof of the laws of thermodynamics. Even the tumultuous solos of Coltrane and Adderley strike me as otherworldly. To be confronted with the voices of the creators, especially that of Davis, at work is at first shocking. True, his voice had been heard on earlier recordings, as when one of his classic lines, “I’m gonna play it first, and tell you what it is later,” introduces “If I Were a Bell”—the opening track of the 1956 Prestige record Relaxin’. There, the words and the sense of musicians being eavesdropped upon goes along with an unbuttoned feel reflected in the very title.

But such is the perfect hipness of Kind of Blue that Miles’ voice here has a completely different effect, not least because we are so used to hearing the succession of tunes as on the original album without the “non-musical” presence of the performers reinserted. This humanizing of the sacred text seems an act of uncool iconclasm.

Still, there are interesting things to be heard in these odd inclusions. Over the years, the twelve-bar blues, “Freddie the Freeloader” is the track that I’ve listened to ten times for ever one of “So What.” The ratio in the blues favor increases for the other tunes. In “Studio Sequence 1” of the Legacy Edition, Townsend introduces the take as “no title.” The name would be added afterwards in honor of the Miles groupie Freddie Tolbert—a bartender and street character who moved from Philadelphia to New York to be able to hear all his gigs. Miles played it first and told himself what it was later.

Before the band starts in on the tune, a voice asks about whether “to play a B-flat on the end.” This must be Wynton Kelly inquiring of the bandleader what to do with the final chord of the form, since this blues doesn’t return to its home key as expected for the final two bars. Miles cancels the second and longest false start also heard on the Legacy Edition because Kelly adds more than Miles wants rather than keeping to the obsession with less that pervades Kind of Blue, the effusions of Coltrane and Adderley notwithstanding.

The last chord sidesteps the home key of B-flat and holds out a tone lower before finally being pulled up to its proper harmony when the twelve bars start anew. With this single, minimal touch, Davis (if it was indeed his idea) embodies the essence of his cool through harmonic means: not only can he lag behind the beat with graceful reluctance, but he can also hold the posture of resistance and disdain across larger expanses of elapsing time. Those final two measures of apparent disinterest stretch to an eternity before these blues slide up grudgingly to their proper position. Miles gives Kelly the honor and duty of the first improvisation, and his opening solo does more than its simply its duty, snapping things back to attention.

Just before starting the tune, Davis has an idea: “Say Wynton, after Cannonball, you play again and then we’ll come in and end it.” In the final take, Kelly does solo once more after all the horns have had their say, but instead of his characteristic right-hand curlicues, he supplies only glassy chords allowing Paul Chambers’ bass to stride into the foreground: here the harmonic and, indeed rhythmic, foundation for the preceding eight minutes of the track emerge in all its easy grandeur. An unmatched improviser of jaunty lines, Kelly also ranks among the greatest blues ensemble players, and it seems to have been his intuition to lay back for these final choruses. Chambers was also a great soloist, but he keeps to the business of walking his bass line. Kelly plays just as Davis had directed him, but perhaps not as Davis had expected. Kelly loved most to accompany—to comp—and here grants himself the full pleasure. With the ornament stripped away, as if to allow us cool contemplation of the flowing source from which the horn and piano improvisations draw their power.

Davis’ hiring of Kelly for this blues instead of Evans was a brilliant decision. But equally as vital was the way Davis used both his pianists.

The sparse horn chords that constitute the “tune” of “Freddie the Freeloader” allow, indeed demand, jaunty intervening commentary, and Kelly’s pianistic optimism brightens the somber mood: he is the light in the shade. Given the chic that glints in the shadows of this music, it is hard to believe it was recorded in the middle of the afternoon—proof that the studio and church keep to their own hours.

Davis also gives Kelly the first solo as if to acknowledge that his warmth is crucial to the maintenance of the Davis cool. With an apparent nonchalance that belies the emphatic nature of the gesture, Davis then begins his subsequent solo by taking two quarter notes from Kelly’s last chorus in what amounts to a casual but unmistakable reassertion of his authority.

Another small but striking difference heard on this the first false start is that the blues is introduced by an upbeat comment from Jimmy Cobb’s snare drum that anticipates the rest of the band—both the pulsing progress of the other members of the rhythm section and the ritual solemnity of the horns. Had this version found its way onto the record instead of the synchronized beginning of the canonic take, there would have been a tiny, but telling, chink in the hermetic hipness that insulates “Freddie” from the outside world.

Miles calls off the first take for being too fast. Then Townsend cautions the trumpeter to stay close to the microphone. Davis asks if he can move it. Townsend replies that “It’s against policy to move a microphone”—apparently a joke about the regulations governing a union facility with retrospective resonance given the earnings disparity between Miles and his sidemen.

After two more miscues the fourth take rolls into jazz history without edit: it is the only complete one of this tune on this session. Kelly could now go home, and the other pianist, Bill Evans, could get to work.

Given how much money the record made, the shabby payout for the sidemen is very uncool, but especially so in the case of Evans, whose harmonic and aesthetic senses were so crucial to the shape of the album, just as Kelly shaped “Freddie.” All the compositions are credited to Davis: the trumpeter was never shy or in the least apologetic about appropriating the work of others. How much Evans’ invention of the ostinato for “Flamenco Sketches”—the final track on the album is worth is hard to say. The tentative musings of Evans and Chambers that serpentine across the arid landscapes of “So What” are priceless, yet worth millions.

I will admit that I’ve never found Evan’s Iberian Zen ruminations as appealing as Kelly’s cool. Evans’s thing was never my kind of blue, but his unmistakable sound colors the album as a whole and makes the disparity between the earnings of Davis and Evans far bigger even than the numbers of zeroes suggests. The blues have their price. The ghost in Evans’ melancholy chords will always haunt Davis’s masterpiece.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

This is the hysteria before the impending crash. We all know it’s coming, but most prefer other topics for discussion. Donald Trump was elected because the country is going bankrupt. Let’s make America great again. Well, let’s not! No sense discussing something that can’t be fixed unless the whole system is chucked and many heads need to roll.

It is always, always, about the money. Epstein was offed in some GLOBAL money and power scheme. It was not about pedophilia, the victims, exposing the elites, they were merely the napkin after dinner. Presently, we are swiftly moving into another recession, but hey, we’ve protected the ladies from being harassed by Placido Domingo!

TRUMP IS FINALLY RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING

'We don't want crazy people owning guns,' the president said in Morristown, NJ. 'They pull the trigger. The gun doesn't pull the trigger.' He said institutions need built to lock such people away.

Trump said he wanted to rebuild the mental institutions closed in the 1960s and 1970s claiming they would help solve mass shootings

Speaking at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, he said: 'We can't let these people be on the streets.'

During my first trip to New York, just as if I had been a Syrian arriving in Nero’s Rome, it was necessary to fulfill certain unavoidable rituals: see Picasso’s Guernica at MOMA; cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot; have a martini at The River Cafe; spend the night in the Chelsea Motel beneath the shadow of Dylan Thomas; devour half of a chicken at Sylvia’s in Harlem and afterwards attend Sunday services in any Chapel of the Seventh-Day Adventists to hear a sermon with rhythm and blues; find out if it were true that there were colonies of white, blind crocodiles in the sewers and if rat men were reproducing among the rusty pipes 50 meters deep, right under Tiffany's jewelry store, where, according to Truman Capote, you had to buy a handful of diamonds to add to the morning oatmeal.

It was an initiatory journey in search of a writer but in this case it was not Truman Capote, who enthralled me; nor Scott Fitzgerald; nor John Dos Passos; nor J.D. Salinger; no, it was the journalist Dorothy Parker whom I bore in my memory from a remote summer of my adolescence in which I discovered that this woman had visited the Hotel Vermeer, in Benicàssim, Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where members of the International Brigade were convalescing. There the journalist had an affair with a brigadista who went crazy at the end of the war because no one in the bars would believe him when he told about this adventure.

New York is a mental state or a literary genre before which a writer should measure himself because it changes nature every five years. When I arrived for the first time, it was a filthy, violent city, with the sickeningly sweet odor of gas mixed with the smell of putrid vanilla ice cream, to the point where you were disappointed if during the first night you were not stabbed in Hell’s Kitchen or if you didn’t see a demented prophet fire a rifle at close range from an eave of a building.

Who was Dorothy Parker? On my first visit to New York, she had recently died from a heart attack, sautéed in alcohol, alone in a hotel with just her dog Troy, on Wednesday, June 7, 1967. However, her verses were still alive and in the air:

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,

Love, the reeling midnight through,

For tomorrow we shall die!

(But, alas, we never do.)”

She had written this without succeeding at dying despite having tried to do so two times: once by cutting her veins with the razor blade of her husband; another time with Veronal.

In her time of glory, this woman was at the center of a world that one could only dream about: Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Hollywood at the end of the silent film era, the golden era of Montparnasse, vacations on the Riviera. She was always invited by her wealthy friends, who needed the outbursts of her scathing tongue during their after dinner conversations or over drinks in the white chairs of their gardens, in order to feel wonderful, diabolical, and evanescent.

In the same manner that she squandered her genius like a mischievous child, she also filled fashionable magazines with her stories. But it was in The New Yorker, of which she was a stockholder, where her talent shone.

One day, she kneeled and prayed:

—Dear God, I pray that you make me stop writing like a woman.

How does that prayer sound today?

Her lyrics lent glamor to the songs of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. The first recording of Glenn Miller, in 1932, was one of her poems entitled, “How Was I to Know this Happiness Was Love?” And in Hollywood, she wrote scripts at a fixed rate per page, left in mailboxes next to those of Scott Fitzgerald, who was by then an alcoholic wreck. She appeared frivolous, always carrying a Pomeranian dog in her arms, but she never stopped being a radical—a point of reference among the writers of The New Yorker, divine specimens who had established their tertulia(*) at The Round Table of the Hotel Algonquin on 59 West 44 Street. She went as far as to occupy a suite there where her lovers arrived and departed as if it were a post office branch.

She depreciated the rich but enjoyed their money, and while she lived she was always surrounded by friends until immolating herself upon the altar of the dawn. That was the New York of Dorothy Parker.

———->. Scientists have been tracking stream temperatures around the Cook Inlet, located south of Anchorage, since 2002. They’ve never recorded a temperature above 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Until now.

On July 7, a major salmon stream on the west side of the Cook Inlet registered 81.7 degrees.

Mauger said she and her team published a study in 2016, creating models outlining moderate and pessimistic projections for how climate change would drive temperatures in Alaska’s streams.

“2019 exceeded the value we expected for the worst-case scenario in 2069,” she said.

Mauger said that the warm temperatures are affecting salmon in various ways, depending on the stream.

“Physiologically, the fish can’t get oxygen moving through their bellies,” Mauger said. In other places in the state, the salmon “didn’t have the energy to spawn and died with healthy eggs in their bellies.”

“Based upon these data, three conclusions can be drawn. First, in FY 2017-18 Mendocino County’s mental health system, under RQMC administration, responded to more crisis conditions, conducted more crisis assessments, and placed more people into inpatient psychiatric care than in FY 2016-17. Second, total hospitalizations reached 645, which represents a 17.3% increase in psychiatric hospitalizations over FY 2016-17. This is a significant increase.”

-Lee Kemper, gap analysis.

A functional mental health system would reduce those numbers, instead they continue to rise. This is not good folks, if this trend continues there won’t be enough “brick and mortar” in the World to help the situation. POTUS and the AVA need more education on this subject.

The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 (MHSA) was United States legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter which provided grants to community mental health centers. During the following Ronald Reagan administration, the United States Congress repealed most of the law.

After the death of Steven Neuroth, Allman pushed all law enforcement in the county to have all their arrestees receive medical/psychological clearances before booking them into his jail. Remember, Allman was named in the Neuroth lawsuit in both his individual and official capacities.

“…only 18 of the 2,081 Emergency Crisis Assessments conducted in FY 2017-18 (less than 1%) were conducted at the County Jail. Most Emergency Crisis Assessments were conducted at the Crisis Center (38.4%); Ukiah Valley Medical Center (35.7%); Mendocino Coast District Hospital (13%); and, Howard Memorial Hospital (11.2%).17 Notwithstanding where crisis assessments are conducted, most interventions leading to mental health crisis assessments involve law enforcement personnel with either the County Sheriff or one of the city police departments.”

Editor: “Well, of course, the guy was a serial predator, but shouldn’t a fourteen-year-old know enough by 14 not to be prey?” The age consent in the state of New York is 17. Case closed. The mental state of the child is irrelevant and the concept of “agency” for said child is ridiculous compared to the devious “agency” of an aged, male pedophile whose intent is to exploit a child.

“+ If you haven’t been paying attention to the Democratic Party for the last 40 years and just now tuned into the presidential debates, you might be shocked at how hostile it is to even debating the modest and sensible ideas proposed by Sanders & Warren. With each mention of “single payer,” “free college,” or “green new deal,” the Party writhes wildly like Linda Blair’s possessed body being sprinkled with Holy Water.

+ Pundits are writing that by embracing Trump’s transparent racism the Republican Party has retreated from the “inclusive” vision of Reagan, who was recently caught on tape engaged in racist banter with Nixon. But Lee Atwater’s Big Tent was always made from a white sheet.

+ John (Who the hell are you, again?) Delaney to Sanders and Warren: “When are you going to tell the American people how you’re going to pay for these radical proposals?” When was the last time politicians told the “American people” how we are going to pay ($37 billion) for the new class of (unseaworthy) aircraft carriers or the $1.5 trillion nuclear modernization scheme?

+ After the first debate, former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill rushed to condemn Sanders and Harris, saying “free stuff from the government does not play well in the Midwest.” This might come as a surprise to the regions farmers, who are currently cashing checks from Trump as reparations for the damage inflicted by his tariffs. Based on this performance, MSDNC will probably be giving McCaskill a primetime show with Joe Lieberman, “Evening Joe?”…”

The Democratic Party, with the exception of Roosevelt’s revolution-deterring New Deal, has done very little for anyone.

Woodrow Wilson took the country to war to guarantee the profits of Morgan and the other bankers.

Truman dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan and destroyed Korea.

Kennedy, before sobering up a bit after the Cuban Missile Crisis, had sent the Green Berets, brutal death squads of brain-washed psychopaths, into Colombia and southeast Asia.

Carter brought us the brutal realpolitik of Zbigniew Brzezinski—and other disasters.

The Clintons are corrupt, vulgar, gluttonous, amoral opportunists.

Obama inherited and continued four wars and then added three more. He bailed out the investment banks and abandoned their victims. He gave use a hideous corporate health care plan that provides insurance companies with taxpayers’ dollars and obliges everyone to buy their faulty products. He never closed Guantanamo. He never passed a bill calling for “card-check” calls for a union as a valid route to the establishment of a union. Roger Hodge labeled his administration “The Mendacity of Hope”.

I miss the American Communist Party, crushed by Wilson and finished off by Truman and Eisenhower. The Reds fought segregation, set up soup kitchens and schools, battled for women’s suffrage, and were the backbones of political unions—rather than the insipid “bread and butter” unions. They battled evictions with their fists and stood up to the corrupt cops who defend the rentier class.

We could also use The Catholic Worker Movement and their wonderful newspaper, THE DAILY WORKER.

Too bad the current Puritanical New Yorker editors wouldn’t allow anyone remotely like Dorothy Parker on the premises; nor yet print anything such a personality were to write; which brings to mind an old Jms. Thurber anecdote: “One evening during Harold Ross’s greatest discontent, the harried editor ran into Dorothy Parker somewhere. ‘I thought you were coming into the office to write a piece last week,’ he said. ‘What happened?’ Mrs. Parker turned upon him the eloquent magic of her dark and lovely eyes. ‘Somebody was using the pencil,’ she explained sorrowfully. It gave a fair picture of the goings on at West 45th Street…”

Which is to say success has pretty much spoiled a once illustrious magazine, 95 this year.

The current New Yorker, so dreadfully disparaged by so many subscribers in yesterdays’ comments, left me dumbfounded: The old ones my friends kick down to me are rarely much better. As Wolcott Gibbs said of “Smart-” Aleck Woolcott, “You could take out every other sentence and not lose his meaning…” and by the same method I sometimes turn over two pages instead of one when reading a New Yorker article and can’t tell that I’ve lost the thread or missed the meaning.

I’ll never forget my first copy of Tina Brown’s NEW YORKER:
It was twice the regular size because it was bloated with nauseating ads.
The magazine’s pages were perfumed—a sickeningly sweet fragrance.
One could not find any features—including the Table of Contents.

Writers like Milan Kundera and Mark Helprin were displaced by NPR icons like George Sanders.

Dorothy Parker, as theater critic for Vanity Fair mimicked Max Beerbohm’s style to a rare pitch of perfection, reducing all Sir Max’s erudition down to it’s essential wit, which is about all an American audience can handle — now or then. The drama critics in the slick regionals — and that’s all the New Yorker ever pretended to be — these days take themselves so very tediously seriously, it’s almost painful; like the time that writer from the New Yorker wrestled American Humor down and broke its arm Your Tina Brown strikes me as the sort of woman who could do that..

Oh, yes! And if you think Rolling Stone would tolerate, let alone publish, anything a bum like Hunter S. Thompson brought in today, you’d be sadly, pitifully mistaken… Funny coincidence there in Aspen, as to the birthplace of Ross and the scene of Gonzo’s pyrotechnical demise. Alister Crowley and Carlos Casteneda, go figure…

Proud to say–I guess–I checked every one but #1(Black Jack chewing gum and Teaberry. I miss some of those long-gone things, but not all of them. I did love, as a kid, those table-side juke boxes in diners. They were so cool.

That was the worst gum I ever tasted, it also left you with a black tongue.

“It has been a long time since America had a chewing gum that turns the tongue black.

Twelve years to be precise. After 104 years as the country’s longest- running flavored gum, Black Jack chewing gum was discontinued in 1974.

The gum’s demise went largely unnoticed, even among the legions of licorice lovers. There was no formal announcement. Not even a hint that America, for the first time since 1870, would be without a licorice-flavored gum.”

A wellregulated militia, aka the right of the people to keep and bare arms—being that it is necessary for the security of a free state, shall not be infringed.

Gun Control is as much a part of the Second Amendment as the right to keep and bear arms. The text of the amendment, which refers to a “well regulated Militia,” suggests as much. Prof. Levine UCLA Law

Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure BECAUSE the onset of war does not always allow time to raise and train an army, and the Revolutionary War showed that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense. The Constitutional Convention therefore decided that the federal government should have almost unfettered authority to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate the militia..

In
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
“The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution…”

The Supreme Court in 2008 made it clear that the right to “keep” a gun is a personal right, and that it means one has a right to keep a functioning firearm for self-defense within the home. But it has refused repeatedly since then to take on the question of whether that right exists also outside the home.

And the spraying issues are covered in the local coastal plan (and spirit Hope’s we have one), BUT IT USED TO SAY, NO SPRAYING WITHin 50 FEET OF A WATERWAY. And it really does not work, because there is no follow up to check the effectiveness. Again, with pg&e that is something to be managed.